The 2016 presidential primary debates are arguably at a breaking point. Donald Trump's refusal to participate in Thursday night's Fox News/Google debate raises to a new level expressions of candidate dissatisfaction with debate questions and debate format.

The problem is that the current format gives moderators and the news organizations that they represent way too much power. They engineer the questions to be asked. They control which candidates have an opportunity to answer what question, and for how long, and at what time. They even pick members of the public to ask biased questions. As a result, debates have gotten quite unfair. For example:

Donald Trump. The leading candidate in the Republican race pulled out of Thursday's debate after Fox News included Megyn Kelly as a questioner over Trump's objections, which stemmed from the question that she asked at the outset of the first debate. In addition, some argue THAT Fox News and Google stacked the deck against Trump in advance of this week's debate with questions to be asked by an illegal immigrant U.S. Army veteran and by a Muslim-American – both young women.

Jim Webb. The lone moderate in the Democratic Party's race dropped out of the Democratic campaign almost immediately after a frustrating first Democratic debate in which he felt he was ignored and poorly treated.

Bernie Sanders. According to Dick Morris, the format of CNN's final Democratic primary debate kept Bernie Sanders from challenging Hillary Clinton's lies. And one of the "town hall" questioners revealed that he had been told to ask the softball question for Hillary that he asked.

Mitt Romney. CNN moderator Candy Crowley and President Obama enacted what appeared to be a prepared script to get Obama off the hook for misleading the American people about the terrorist nature of the Benghazi attack, which left several dead Americans.

As these examples demonstrate, moderators and the organizations that they represent use their power over the process to tip the scales in favor of one candidate or the other. Anti-establishment candidates appear to get targeted during the primary election debates, while Republicans get targeted in the general election debates.

[An] extensive argument for balanced trade, and a program to achieve balanced trade is presented in Trading Away Our Future, by Raymond Richman, Howard Richman and Jesse Richman. “A minimum standard for ensuring that trade does benefit all is that trade should be relatively in balance.” [Balanced Trade entry]

Journal of Economic Literature:

[Trading Away Our Future] Examines the costs and benefits of U.S. trade and tax policies. Discusses why trade deficits matter; root of the trade deficit; the “ostrich” and “eagles” attitudes; how to balance trade; taxation of capital gains; the real estate tax; the corporate income tax; solving the low savings problem; how to protect one’s assets; and a program for a strong America....

Atlantic Economic Journal:

In Trading Away Our Future Richman ... advocates the immediate adoption of a set of public policy proposal designed to reduce the trade deficit and increase domestic savings.... the set of public policy proposals is a wake-up call... [February 17, 2009 review by T.H. Cate]